The ways in which Hanukkah was reshaped by American Jews reveals the changing goals and values that emerged among different contingents each December as they confronted the reality of living as a religious minority in the United States. Bringing together clergy and laity, artists and businessmen, teachers, parents, and children, Hanukkah has been a dynamic force for both stability and change in American Jewish life. The holiday's distinctive transformation...

"[This] is the important story of how Judaism enhanced America and how America inspired Judaism. Steven R. Weisman tells the dramatic history of how Judaism redefined itself in America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries--the personalities that fought each other and shaped its evolution and, crucially, the force of the American dynamic that transformed an ancient religion. The struggles that produced a redefinition of Judaism illuminate the...